Prologue 9
"Dear Healer, tell me what ails my
father. He had been sick, I was to know, but his sudden turn to worse baffles
me truly." Iago asked the healer outside of the chamber. His father lies
in there heaving with every breath, and coughed out blood in his mouth. Iago
had came running on the advise of the healer's daughter who sighted him at the
corner. He knew his father was ill, and near to death from the looks of it, but
that was looming from him with the new season. Since the healer had come, his
father was improving and looked to recover, but the turn of events in the last
day, left him for worse.
"Your father was recovering but then
he took to this at noon. I am still examining him and would need some time to
do so." The healer excused himself while the devoted son ran to his father
side for companionship. He knelt before his father's bedding and prayed to the
Gods to heal his father. Meanwhile the healer rushed back to his own home, and
sat by himself in the herbs room. He clasped his head on his hands, and moaned
in pain.
"Tell me your pain, father."
Emilia walked up to her father and slowly kneaded the muscles on his shoulders.
He shook his head and refused to look up. The daughter held the father's arms
and then he spoke.
"I did wrong today, Emilia." The
older man replied. "I killed a man."
"But when and how?" Emilia
looked to her father. He had been senile and of late clumsy.
"I prescribed the wrong herbs to the
man. He had been poisoned by it." The healer admitted his mistake. "I
only saw it when I visited him. I was too late."
"Who? Father, tell me." Emilia
asked.
"The Legionnaire' father" The
healer replied. Emilia hugged her father tightly to hold him. She shed tears
for him. Then she composed herself.
"Can we still save him?" Emilia
asked him. He nodded and then shook his head. Emilia knew then it would be too
late. She left him there to walked to the rear of the house. She cried there
alone in the garden letting the flowers knew of her pain. But her pain was to
be more unbearable by two days later.
"I come to see the Healer." The
Legionnaire asked of the healer at the doorway of her home.
"My father had retired from it. He
only attend to a selective few now." Emilia told the legionnaire but the
later was insistent on seeing the healer.
"Tell him to see me or I would have
the Vigeles here." The Vigeles were the law enforcers besides other works.
"I am here." The healer had
appeared from inside the house. He led the Legionnaire inside and soon there
was some loud voices. Emilia rushed in and saw her father seated there with the
same horror looks in his face as that day when he told her of the mistake.
"You have not much of a choice."
The Legionnaire told the older man. "A life for another."
"Promised that you would treat her
well." The older man asked. The Legionnaire named Iago agreed. He was
taking Emilia as his love for the life of of his departed father. She ran to
him and looked at him.
"It was the only way, my child. I
would not had survived the mines. Or even the journey." The old man told
his daughter. "You would not be alone anymore."
Emilia was never alone. She was a
Legionnaire's wife but she was his personal slave. When he wants her and when
he kicks her.
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